At 9:56pm U.S. Eastern Time on 20 July 1969, 94 per cent of American TVs were tuned to one thing: live coverage of Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

But how did the general public get to be so enamoured by space exploration?

The authors of a new book say it wasn’t by accident – Nasa ran a broad and extensive advertising campaign that ensured the public would be sold on the idea of going to the moon.

In Marketing the Moon authors Scott and Jurek highlight some of the advertising campaigns Nasa ran in the days of the Apollo programme in order to sell the public on missions to the moon, such as Disney's Tomorrowland (pictured) which imagined the possibilities of spaceflight

The remarkable images in the book reveal some of the advertising campaigns Nasa ran.

In hindsight, some of their tricks and methods seem blindingly obvious now.

But back in the day, they served to increase the profile of space exploration.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Share

In 'Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program', which is on sale tomorrow in the UK and already on sale in the US, authors David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek tell the story of how Nasa sold the Apollo programme to the public.

It is, they say, one of the most successful marketing and public relations campaigns in history.

The two of them are avid collectors of space memorabilia and in their book they have compiled over 200 adverts, TV stills and photographs from their private collections they have accumulated for two decades.

They reveal how massive campaigns were launched by Nasa in one of the first instances of ‘brand journalism’.

They don’t, however, say it was a bad thing – rather, it was deemed necessary at the time in order to drum up public support.

Nasa was keen to flaunt its astronauts at every opportunity, leading to them often having many appearances on TV. Here astronauts from the Apollo 15 mission appear on the Dick Cavett show in 1971

On the left, Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad advertises a pair of Revo sunglasses, while on the right Omega advertises their 'space-themed' watch

Some companies were so proud of their involvement in the space programme that they would send reporters detailed schematics and diagrams of the components they had built to garner more press coverage

‘Imagine convincing the American
public to spend as much as four percent of the national budget in some
years, to send 12 people to the surface of the moon,’ Scott tells
Forbes.

‘It was a crazy thing to do and marketing got us there.’

Co-author
Jurek adds that ‘Apollo was Nasa’s Super Bowl event – targeted,
scheduled, and sustained, with enough global interest to draw a big
audience-share in a world with less media and communication choice.’

But today, the authors say, Nasa is challenged by trying to engage a fractured, global audience in their endeavours.

‘From
a marketing perspective, Nasa is involved in so many areas, that there
is no unified theme that pulls a large enough focused audience. It is a
challenge many marketers face in many industries,' says Jurek.

‘One
needs to think of Nasa like Coca-Cola. If you just defined Coca-Cola by
Coke, then you would miss its many other brands and message channels
like Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, Fresca, etc.

‘We went to space to explore the moon, but in the end we discovered the Earth.

‘Things
might have been completely different if we had found signs of life or
precious metals and raw resources on the moon. Instead, we saw Earth as a
fragile blue marble — and started to look inward.’

Nasa's unprecedented marketing campaign across all forms of media had the goal of getting the public excited about the prospect of a manned space programme and ensuring support for the agency continued to flow

Nasa signed an agreement with Life magazine (left) until 1962 that gave them exclusive astronauts to the astronauts. On the right is a memo sent from ex-journalist Paul Haney to Alan Shepard, Commander of Apollo 14 and later Director of Public Affairs at Nasa, pleading him to keep the actions of the astronauts unedited and unscripted

A host of items including drinks (pictured) were given a 'space-theme' to drum up support for the Apollo programme

Nasa began in rather contentious circumstances – at the outset of the American space programme, the government was unsure whether to leave space exploration to the military or make it a civilian programme.

NASA STATS AND FACTS

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) became operational on 1 October 1958.

Back then it was afforded as much as 4% of the national budget; now it is under 1%.

Its annual budget for 2012 was $17.8 billion.

It has conducted a host of mission across the solar system.

These
include the first manned missions to the moon, the first missions
to the outer solar system and the first rovers on Mars.

Thanks to the efforts of Hugh Dryden, Deputy Administrator for Nasa from 1958 to 1967, it was the latter that became the case.

Nasa was formally signed into being on 29 July 1958, and with that the cosmic expectations of the nation were placed on its shoulders.

The Administrators of Nasa over the next decade, Keith Glennan and then James Webb, were both all too aware of the support the agency would need to succeed in the goal, set by Kennedy in 1961, of beating the Soviet Union to the moon.

Thus, with James Webb in particular, he built Nasa not only into a well-rounded scientific agency but also one that had public relations high on the agenda.

Nasa hired a host of media veterans to head its PR team, supplying the press with all the material they needed to keep the public informed about the agency’s space efforts.

‘By having journalists work as the conduits for Nasa to the outside world, Nasa was perfectly positioned to deliver news and information content that could be quickly assimilated into the news streams of the day,’ says Jurek.

Up until 1962, for example, they signed an exclusive agreement with Life magazine to grant them access to the astronauts and their wives.

Across other magazines and newspapers, Nasa began to highlight how space exploration was not necessarily just something of science fiction.

Rather, it was creating technologies that would benefit the common person.

And their astronauts were not backroom scientists – they were charismatic men, most of them pilots, and Nasa made sure to flaunt them at every opportunity to the public.

Here a news channel reports live on Apollo 13, which at the time in April 1970 was stranded in space after an explosion on the spacecraft

Some companies were so proud of their involvement in the space programme that they would send reporters detailed schematics and diagrams of the components they had built to garner more press coverage

The end result of all this intense marketing and PR to boost the profile of space exploration was that on 20 July 1969, 94 per cent of American TVs were tuned in to watch Neil Armstrong take humanity's first steps on the lunar surface

Product placement was also a big deal, with cameras, watches, drinks and more given space-themed reboots.

Marketing the Moon shows off some of these public relations attempts made by Nasa in a series of vintage photographs, artwork and advertisements.

And this rare collection, containing many unpublished pieces of memorabilia, helps to tell the story of how those 94 per cent of American TVs were all tuned to Armstrong's first steps on the moon.

‘Given their pioneering brand journalism and real-time marketing efforts, Apollo is the single most important case study for modern PR and marketing practitioners in the last 100 years,’ says Jurek.

‘The space program became a victim of its own success, and rather than having its successes extended across all of the government enterprise, the American people missed out on an opportunity for further innovation and productivity.

Scott adds: ‘[Apollo] accomplished the most audacious goal ever attempted by humans. I don’t see anything remotely like that today.

‘The reason we haven’t landed humans on Mars is due to a lack of marketing and PR. By invoking a quest, Kennedy motivated us.

‘If we’re ever going to conquer space again, we need a powerful story to get us there.’